While organic electroluminescent (EL) devices have been known for over two decades, their performance limitations have represented a barrier to many desirable applications. In simplest form, an organic EL device is comprised of an anode for hole injection, a cathode for electron injection, and an organic medium sandwiched between these electrodes to support charge recombination that yields emission of light. These devices are also commonly referred to as organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. Representative of earlier organic EL devices are Gurnee et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,172,862, issued Mar. 9, 1965; Gurnee U.S. Pat. No. 3,173,050, issued Mar. 9, 1965; Dresner, “Double Injection Electroluminescence in Anthracene”, RCA Review, Vol. 30, pp. 322-334, 1969; and Dresner U.S. Pat. No. 3,710,167, issued Jan. 9, 1973. The organic layers in these devices, usually composed of a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, were very thick (much greater than 1 μm). Consequently, operating voltages were very high, often >100V.
More recent organic EL devices include an organic EL element consisting of extremely thin layers (e.g. <1.0 μm) between the anode and the cathode. Herein, the term “organic EL element” encompasses the layers between the anode and cathode electrodes. Reducing the thickness lowered the resistance of the organic layer and has enabled devices that operate much lower voltage. In a basic two-layer EL device structure, described first in U.S. Pat. No. 4,356,429, one organic layer of the EL element adjacent to the anode is specifically chosen to transport holes, therefore, it is referred to as the hole-transporting layer, and the other organic layer is specifically chosen to transport electrons, referred to as the electron-transporting layer. Recombination of the injected holes and electrons within the organic EL element results in efficient electroluminescence.
There have also been proposed three-layer organic EL devices that contain an organic light-emitting layer (LEL) between the hole-transporting layer and electron-transporting layer, such as that disclosed by Tang et al [J. Applied Physics, 65, 3610-3616, (1989)]. The light-emitting layer commonly consists of a host material doped with a guest material Still further, there has been proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,769,292 a four-layer EL element comprising a hole-injecting layer (HIL), a hole-transporting layer (HTL), a light-emitting layer (LEL) and an electron transport/injection layer (ETL). These structures have resulted in improved device efficiency.
Many emitting materials that have been described as useful in an OLED device emit light from their excited singlet state by fluorescence. The excited singlet state is created when excitons formed in an OLED device transfer their energy to the excited state of the dopant. However, it is generally believed that only 25% of the excitons created in an EL device are singlet excitons. The remaining excitons are triplet, which cannot readily transfer their energy to the singlet excited state of a dopant. This results in a large loss in efficiency since 75% of the excitons are not used in the light emission process.
Triplet excitons can transfer their energy to a dopant if it has a triplet excited state that is low enough in energy. If the triplet state of the dopant is emissive it can produce light by phosphorescence, wherein phosphorescence is a luminescence involving a change of spin state between the excited state and the ground state. In many cases singlet excitons can also transfer their energy to lowest singlet excited state of the same dopant. The singlet excited state can often relax, by an intersystem crossing process, to the emissive triplet excited state. Thus, it is possible, by the proper choice of host and dopant, to collect energy from both the singlet and triplet excitons created in an OLED device and to produce a very efficient phosphorescent emission.
One class of useful phosphorescent materials are transition metal complexes having a triplet excited state. For example, fac-tris(2-phenylpyridinato-N,C2′)iridium(III) (Ir(ppy)3) strongly emits green light from a triplet excited state owing to the large spin-orbit coupling of the heavy atom and to the lowest excited state which is a charge transfer state having a Laporte allowed (orbital symmetry) transition to the ground state (K. A. King, P. J. Spellane, and R. J. Watts, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 107, 1431 (1985), M. G. Colombo, T. C. Brunold, T. Reidener, H. U. Gudel, M. Fortsch, and H.-B. Burgi, Inorg. Chem., 33, 545 (1994) Small-molecule, vacuum-deposited OLEDs having high efficiency have also been demonstrated with Ir(ppy)3 as the phosphorescent material and 4,4′-N,N′-dicarbazole-biphenyl (CBP) as the host (M. A. Baldo, S. Lamansky, P. E. Burrows, M. E. Thompson, S. R. Forrest, Appl. Phys. Lett., 75, 4 (1999), T. Tsutsui, M.-J. Yang, M. Yahiro, K. Nakamura, T. Watanabe, T. Tsuji, Y. Fukuda, T. Wakimoto, S. Miyaguchi, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys., 38, L1502 (1999)).
Another class of phosphorescent materials include compounds having interactions between atoms having d10 electron configuration, such as Au2(dppm)Cl2 (dppm=bis(diphenylphosphino)methane) (Y. Ma et al, Appl. Phys. Lett., 74, 1361 (1998)). Still other examples of useful phosphorescent materials include coordination complexes of the trivalent lanthanides such as Tb3+ and Eu3+ (J. Kido et al, Appl. Phys. Lett., 65, 2124 (1994)). While these latter phosphorescent compounds do not necessarily have triplets as the lowest excited states, their optical transitions do involve a change in spin state of 1 and thereby can harvest the triplet excitons in OLED devices.
Certain inefficient or non-emissive organometallic compounds satisfy the criteria of large spin-orbit coupling from the heavy metal and a charge transfer state as the lowest excited state. However, the charge transfer states are dominated by nonradiative processes (T. J. Meyer et al, Inorg. Chem., 34, 473 (1995)). These processes are influenced by the vibrational overlap between the initial and final states in the acceptor modes (E. M. Kober et al J. Phys. Chem., 90, 3722, (1986)). The rate constant for nonradiative decay increases as the vibrational overlap increases (T. J. Meyer et al, Inorg. Chem., 34, 473 (1995)). One strategy to reduce the rate constant of nonradiative decay is through the π-delocalizaton of the acceptor ligand in the excited state.
Arene-transition metal complexes are known to be particularly stable organometallic compounds and represent a class of organometallics compounds that provide a heavy metal with a large spin-orbit coupling constant and a metal to ligand charge transfer state as the lowest excited states (J. A. Crayston et al., J. Organomet. Chem., 423, 237, (1992)). However, these materials are not known as phosphorescent compounds apparently due to the dominant nonradiative decay processes.
There remains a need for new organometallic materials that will function as phosphorescent materials having improved efficiency, stability, manufacturability, or spectral characteristics.